Voyage to Clubland: Investigating Peep-Show Theory

Images from: Google Images

I was out clubbing again yesterday for a friend’s birthday. When we got there it was quite empty, but we had to take advantage of the £10 before 11pm deal, because the promoters threatened ominously that it would be ‘more thereafter’ and being broke in a chic studenty type of way, we had to ensure that we’d still have enough money on us to pay for the night bus home.

So we got in, hissed at the £2 charge for coat check (it’s usually £1, the cheeky gits!), found a good spot to hang and began to sway lightly on our feet in the way that clubbers do when they enter a party space. It’s code for, we’re here now, we’re open to see what’s gonna happen tonight, DJ play something that will change this sway into stepping! In other words, it’s like the warm up before the athletics.

As the club filled, the DJ’s set progressed from upbeat Soul to velvety RnB/Hip-Hop, and with this progression, came a progression in the dancing. At this point, we were all dancing, screaming along to the lyrics, and listening out for what the next song in the mix would be. It was somewhere at this point, amidst all the activity, that I noticed that the clubland gender roles became more played out than ever.

For guys, a large part of the clubbing experience is voyeurism and for girls, it’s performance.Perhaps I have always known this, but it became more of an articulated thought than a vague idea last night. As someone who likes watching people, I’m very shy about being watched myself, so when it came to the part where the lyrics were telling the girls to ‘wind for me’ and ‘jack your leg up’ and ‘back that ass up’ and ‘work it like you’re working for dollars’, I took a step back and perched on the back of a sofa. I then realised that all the guys were either perched on the same sofa, or up against a wall, watching the spectacle going on. A guy friend pointed at one if my friends and said, ‘Wow that b**** looks fiiiiiine,’ so I said, ‘Errr, yeah, I understand that you mean she looks nice, although maybe I’d have used different words to describe it.’ She was of course, naked. She was ‘having fun’ sexually dancing – exhibiting. He was ‘having fun’ inspecting the anatomy and mating rituals of a prize b**** – voyeur-ing.

Every so often, during a particularly dramatic contortion by one of the girls, a guy or a couple of guys would latch them selves onto her behind and simulate a sex act. Then all the other guys would whip out their cameras i.e. Oh the pleasure of sight both for now and here after! Don’t get me wrong, I love dancing, and mucking about with friends, but the focused attention that seems to demand that you dry hump and pseudo-copulate on the dancefloor kind of kills it for me. Being clung to by another being impedes my movement, so when all that starts, I’m more than happy to go back to people watching. There are always so many things to see: elaborate avoidance schemes, successful linkages, attention seekers, the cool kids, the kids who can pretend they’re cool because it’s dark, comical drunken virtuoso, all sorts!

After a while, all the guys were asking me what was wrong, and why I wasn’t 'having fun'. It wasn’t enough for them that I just enjoy kicking back and watching the scene (even though they know what I’m like already). On top of that, it wasn’t enough that I happen to be mildly scoliotic and aggravated winding on the dancefloor means hell to pay pain-wise the next day. It wasn’t enough that I fell on the stairs yesterday, and my knee got hurt because I landed awkwardly on it while trying to protect the chocolate cake I was carrying at the time. None of that was enough, they swarmed round me like flies, pestering, trying to force me to ‘have fun’. Trying to get me to do the whole ‘I’m sexy all up in the club bit’ so they could sit back and watch. Oh hell no! Not last night.

What was funny was, I did get up and dance again, but my dancing wasn’t valid because I didn’t ‘get low’. I didn’t proffer my bottom to the first available taker, I didn’t jump onto a sofa and bend myself in half. Stepping my heeled feet and midi dress, moving my arms, nodding my head, mouthing along to the lyrics, snapping my fingers, moving my shoulders, flicking my hair, swaying my hips lightly – none of that constitutes dancing, apparently. Someone said to me, ‘come on girl, put your back into it.’ So I said, with a huge smile ‘Sorry, I don’t grind.’ ‘Ugh,’ was his response.

The birthday boy sidled up to me and said, ‘I used to think too much when I was younger too, and it’s not good for you. Try and have fun.’ Granted, he was drunk.

‘I am having fun,’ I said. ‘I’m enjoying the music, I’m enjoying being with everyone. And look, I am dancing.’

‘No you’re not, you’re depressed,’ he declared. ‘Here, have some more alcohol then you’ll be dancing properly.’

I rolled my eyes (privately of course). Another cliché: buy a girl a drink and she’ll lose all her inhibitions. For goodness sake, I come from Opobo, where local moonshine, is the preferred alternative to Listerine. The Irish afterall have their ales, and we have our gin.

‘I’m fine hun, seriously, thanks! Stop worrying.’ I waved my hands in the air and started doing the electric slide and he looked at me as though he really wanted to believe me but somehow, I wasn’t making that possible.

Sigh! I looked around. Another girl had lined herself up with a ledge and was giving it the same attention she would give to a man under the right circumstances. The guys were moments away from dribbling. They had forgotten about capturing the image on camera for later. They were focused on the right now, broasting in lewd concentration, being stimulated by their sight. After about three minutes, someone began to film it. Then she made a show of not wanting to be filmed (as though she had NO CLUE that she was being watched before) and then carried right on with romancing the wooden ledge, with even greater alacrity, I might add. One brave man stepped forward and welcomed her posterior with his crotch. ‘That’s what I’m talking about,’ the other guys said. So it would appear, I thought.

Eventually, I decided to leave, because frankly I was tired, and I just wanted to go to bed. Why people can’t seem to accept that it's a valid choice for a girl to come into a club and just chill, like I was doing, is beyond me. Maybe because unspoken club rules state that the guys are supposed to be pleased/pleasured by what they see, and the girls are supposed to provide the entertainment. My lack of performance (on their terms) was robbing them of a fraction of the £10 value they came in to behold, and it struck me as all very problematic. The guys paid £10 to see some good booty, the girls paid £10 to have the undivided attention of a room full of horny men.

I suppose most girls love to be watched and ogled at, but I’ve never been most girls and I make no apologies for that. I really don't enjoy being watched. I’m not a tomboy at all – I do love my heels, a nice frock, makeovers, etc, nor am I particularly interested in being controversial, but I find it difficult to accept that if I’m not consciously trying to make a guy imagine having sex with me, then I’m contravening some sort of ‘fun having’ rule. If you asked any of them about last night, they would claim that they’re not sure whether or not I had fun. And I would beg to differ. I so did, because I got dressed up, danced (on my terms), hung out with friends, took silly photos, listened to good music, and got some fodder for my blog! It probably sounds like I’m being disparaging of the club experience, but I’m not; I actually like going clubbing. I’m merely trying to deconstruct it and find out what the point is, for the different people who go there. Why they go, what they percieve as fun (and why that is). Also, if they’ve ever actually stopped to question the shape their assumptions about clubland behaviour take i. e. do they ever consider that they might be playing a role that's dictated to them by the club space, and by media semiotics surrounding similar spaces (e. g. music videos)? What happened to the days when most dancing was about movement, rhythm, skill and not latching on to the tail end of the nearest mother ship?

I suppose the idea about meditation in clubs in my poem below (Nightclub) came true in that I reached a new gender role discovery. I would also like to refer to my post (Exploring Erotica) below for the topic of respectability. Some girls complain about the way guys respond to them in clubs. Granted, there are lots of losers who do unprecedented letching (heck they’d hit on a duck if it waddled past), but for the large part, guys respond to the signals that the girls are putting out. Note to women (again!): if you don’t want to be mistaken for a stripper, don’t act like one and then pretend to be offended when you’re treated like one. At a certain stage of your life, you should be able to make cognitive assessments about your behaviour. If you’re going to act out a part, be prepared to deal with the repercussions.

About the unprecedented letches, though, while I was minding my business waiting for the night bus home, a bald, sweaty, rotund, drunken weirdo staggered up to me and began to interrogate me. Even after he had established that I wasn't Halle Berry, Samantha Fox, Shakira or Beyonce, he asked me if I'd like to go home with him. I declined politely. 'Is it becaue I'm ugly?' he asked. I didn't respond. He then tried to help himself to a handful of the chips I was eating. 'Stop it,' I yelled. 'Go away! You can't just stick your hands in other people's food.' 'I only want one chip,' he said. I shut the take away box and glared at him. Thank goodness, I shut it before he could get his grotty fingers on my food. 'Oh, you slut,' he said, shaking his fists, then he disappeared. Last time I checked, there was nothing slutty about eating soggy chips in a full length black coat and no make-up, so I didn't need to be offended, because he was clearly the one with issues, mostly, those to do with cider-induced altered perception. If I had been pole-dancing on the bus shelter, then maybe he'd have had a point. But I wasn't, so he didn't. Oh ye women, take note.

And that, my darlings, is it from me…for now.

Smooches,
xx

Mediocrity Polemic: In Praise of Shoddy Work

Image from http://montanalibraries.org/ILLTraining/images/j0196394.GIF

I just watched A Beautiful Mind for the first time. It was brilliant, and I think Nash really was a genius. I’m about six years behind Hollywood, but never mind, I’m trying to catch up. What I came away with was a question: What is the difference between achievement and recognition? Until John Nash’s tutor posed the question to him, I had never needed to consider that they were two distinct entities. It’s almost logical to take it for granted that the two are interchangeable; so logical in fact, that it takes stepping back to extricate one from the other.

On stepping back, I realise that it’s a distinction that needs to be made more often. Take contemporary fiction for example. There are a few authors I’ve read, whom if I were their teacher, I’d write ‘Stop being lazy and apply yourself’ in red across the top of their paper. But whether or not I think their work is mediocre, they have awards, endorsements and reviews (celebrity) that seem to suggest that they are good at what they do. In that scenario, their recognition implies that they must have achieved extremely high standards of work, when in fact, they might not have.

In the same way, there are geniuses working away all night, churning out masterpiece after masterpiece, yet because they don’t yet have a public platform, it may be possible for an anonymous observer to play down the excellence of the work; simply because he can assume that if the work was reeeeeaallly that good, then surely it would have been noticed by now.

I think this separation of achievement and recognition can and should be be applied to most creative fields. There are popular singers, writers, producers, film makers, actors, designers etc that make one think, how in the world did they get a deal? Or maybe the undeserving heroes used to produce top quality stuff until the critical acclaim and recognition made them complacent? And on the flipside, there are incredibly talented people we know who’ve been banging at the doors of opportunity for ages and haven’t got the recognition that their work deserves.

In Emile Durkheim’s paper, ‘The Functions of Crime’ he insists that crime actually serves a purpose in society. Stay with me here. According to him, punishment of criminals acts as social organisation, deterring the general public from doing the same. Crime also helps in the governance of societies because it reveals the negative changes that have occurred in morality (by measuring collective responses etc) and enables them to facilitate better security services for the average citizen. I have decided to appropriate this concept (the concept of crap stuff having a purpose) to my appreciation of untalented geniuses.

Rather than continue to rant and rave about how the prominent people with disgraceful work shouldn’t be where they are, I’ve decided to learn from them, to use them as inspiration and I think this is something we can all do. If they, with all their half-arsed work can get a record deal/get published/get exhibited/get cast/get awarded/get endorsed/get signed, then so can the rest of us. Their mediocrity is actually a good thing about them because it serves a purpose; it gives the rest of us hope that if they could hoodwink the world with their nonsense, then we can sure as hell bless the world with our excellence.



P. S. The psychiatrist who had Nash committed in A Beautiful Mind was called Dr Rosen. There’s a well known article called ‘On Being Sane in Insane Places’ written by a David L. Rosenhan. Is that a (reality to fiction) coincidence? Or does the scriptwriter happen to own the same books as me? Strange.

Nightclub

photo from http://www.gordonbarker.com/new_images/nightclub.jpg

While I was in a club recently, I started thinking about what the space meant to the people who were there, what it represented, and why we had all chosen to spend four to five hours of our night there (apart from the 'obvious' pursuit of fun). I didn't go in there planning to go all Lefebvre and intellectualize a night out - that's just nerdy - but it randomly occured to me during a mini dancing time-out to catch my breath. As the idea occured to me in Kabuki (which means Japanese theatre) I had hoped the poem would be a Haiku (Japanese style of poetry) to match , but the words didn't quite work out like that. Anyways, here it is! x

Nightclub

Den of meditation
Nectarisation of desires
Boiling down, sweetening slowly
Like jam.

Space of mixed anthems
Consciousness individualised
Me, my, mine, to group dancing
Startling clarity.

Most irreverent of decibels
Sinewy lyrics, testosterone rhymes
Latent distraction a blank silence
To ponder life.

Subversion of curse
Wallflower to observe, flanneur
Crowd watching and cross referencing
Mental resource.

Cocoon of darkness
Shock of flashing lights
Subconscious epiphany brewing
Unlikely oasis.



© June 2007

Quorn Shoes - How Far is Too Far?

I've had a lovely week bumming around Brighton with my sister. We walked on the beach, got leered at by random weirdos, had ice creams and hot dogs, wandered round the Laines and ate entirely too much tiramisu.

Wandering round the Laines was interesting, and I thought I'd bring back a souvenir of my exasperation for you guys - a picture of a vegetarian shoe store. Now come on! I think this might be on par, if not slightly more ridiculous than ideas like communism, fair trade organic gluten free sashimi and those hideous jute 'ghana must go' bags that Louis Vuitton is trying to turn into a handbag trend. So not happening!

While we should respect animal and plant life on earth, people have forgotten that animals are subject to us, to humans. Why should there be vegetarian shoes? I refrain from being mean about vegetarian food; I thought Quorn was the height of food substitution but shoes? It is the cow's fate to give us meat, milk and leather. Not using this leather because we feel sorry for the cow is the latest addition to what I'd like to call my 'Catalogue of Modern Man's Inferiority Complex'. It's because we've forgotten that we are the boss of the cows, and not the other way round, that we can pussyfoot around them and shortchange ourselves of good footwear, just because, sniff sniff, we feel sorry for the cows. If anyone bothered to ask them, they'd find that the cows are actually very happy to keep us in top quality, beautifully stinking leather shoes, belts and bags.

Barring dietary allergies, I don't know why anyone wouldn't eat meat, but as I said, I won't be mean about it, because we must be respectful of people's preferences etc, but taking the aversion into shoes goes to far. If you don't eat meat, don't create things that look and taste like it (Quorn) but aren't it - that's like eating your cake and having it (or is it having your cake and eating it?) and its very confusing for some of us. But why do there need to be vegetarian shoes? Last time I checked the dictionary, being vegetarian was a dietary preference, not a movement. In the light of this, is it possible or right, even, for vegetarianism to be extended into non-dietary areas? It's whimsical. What if meat eaters decided that they'd only use clothes, stationery and other products that contained some sort of animal component? Would that be allowed? I don't think so.

I mean, kudos to the entrepreneur of this venture. It's very good niche marketing and all, but Quorn shoes? I mean, really! Strangely, I found it oddly charming that such a shop should be established in Brighton. Strangely, Brighton always reminds me of what I imagine a conglomeration of Camden/Soho/Covent Garden would look like. Edge, funk, alternative & random bottled and sprawled out by the sea.

The Orange Prize, 2007

Congratulations, Chimamanda. Well done on winning the Orage Prize. I am very proud of you. To all indiginous Africans who in our own little way, work everyday to do positive PR for our continent, to all other people who are working to make this possible, and to everyone who is willing to believe that we're not all kwashiorkor victims, I say God bless and keep the faith.

Big White Fog

Images from www.almeida.co.uk

After I saw this play, I realised that my opinions from a previous post (Origins and Where We’re From) might actually be flawed. Theodore Ward’s Big White Fog, directed by Michael Attenborough, no less, has had a grand welcome from the literary circuit. It was discovered quite recently to have been written before A Raisin in the Sun, which until now was known as the first Afro-American mainstream play. Basically, it covers the experiences of the Mason family, when Vic the father ties up his family’s life savings in Marcus Garvey’s shipping line which never materialised. He ended up losing the money, his children dropped out of school, and his daughter began to play pay-per-touch with her body to help her mother take care of the younger siblings. Of course the very same father turned round and called her a whore, complained to his wife that she should fix the kid’s leaking shoes etc, conveniently forgetting that it was his royal highness who kicked them to the bottom of the poverty line in the first place.

The subtext and the inter-family relations outdoored all the most pertinent issues of the time: Black on Black attitudes that came with different shades of lightness of darkness, the political climate, etc. But what made me think the most were Vic and Dan’s opposing views which related directly to my post. Vic was following Garvey and trying to claim Africa for the Africans. He got promoted to something like Overseer of the Grounds and Goats, ahead of their planned return to Africa. Dan, however, declared that he was American because he was born there. In a nutshell, Big Whit Fog dramaised the conflict between The American Dream and the Back to Africa schools of thought, and how the different ideologies affected the Mason family during the Depression.

By the end of the play, I had moved from siding with Vic to siding with Dan, at least somewhat. Dan thought that The Garvey idea was just another way of perpetrating segregation, and a hoax. I now agree that from-ness is not always absolutely about where your parents are from, but a combination of factors. And so I stand corrected. It was silly for Vic to assume that he would automatically be a land baron in Africa, and silly, I think, for the Garvey squad to bestow such an honour on him; it wasn’t their place. It betrayed a condescending attitude towards the people who were already living there – why would Vic and his superiors assume that those who had been in Africa always and never left would gladly step aside and relinquish agricultural control of their land to strangers? The notion also irked me because it took the quintessential standpoint of Africa as a table top that many ignorant people tend to adopt. Did Garvey know how large Africa was? Did he know that there are way over 15000 different cultures rooted there? Did he know that he wasn’t the only one with his eye on the prize, and that it wouldn’t be so easy to just waltz in?

I am not yet a Garvey scholar, so forgive me if my rants are off the mark, and I will go away and do some reading; but these were the issues thrown up by the play (which I have on trusted authority) as being quite historically accurate. Nevertheless, Dan turned out to be right, and there was a huge cathartic situation at the end, where Vic got shot (served him right; I liked him, but it was poetic for him to die), and his son Les, and his other friends resisted eviction by the Mayor’s cohorts.

The only factor that I found slightly chilling, was that the last scene seemed like a thinly veiled attempt to endorse socialism. I mean, come on! But I won’t get into that today; my opinions on socialism etc tend to degenerate very fast into expletives, and this is neither the time or the place, so I shall spare you the aggro.

That said, it was possibly the best bit of theatre I’ve seen so far. The set was the work of a brainchild. It felt like we were sitting in someone’s living room, eavesdropping on their conversations. Without any gushing or histrionics, I’d encourage everyone to go and see it. Believe it or not, there are some hugely comic scenes in there, what with the snide old grandmother and her pearls of wisdom.

Big White Fog shows at the Almeida Theatre until 30th June, 2007.
Tickets from £6 - £29.50
http://www.almeida.co.uk/

A Tale of One City

Conglomeration of intellect and wit
With Billy Bryson in Foyles Bookshop
The sound of travel writing and jokes
Cheery bibliophiles high on the smell
Of new paper, varnish and ink.
Drunk on silence, queueing for autographs
While a nameless crazy scholar rocked on the floor,
Marinating in his own stink.

**
A stroll through Soho in the evening breeeze
Latent with distraction, ‘Dirty White Boy’
Emblazoned on Old Compton Street
Yummy cakes in windows, flip flops on our feet
30% off strawberry sauce and ribs
Rainbow artwork objectified the gay night
Their hands clammy in clasp, making a point
Gazes held slightly longer, longer in assessment.
**
Rounding the night up with music and drinks
Mojitos and shots of Absinthe are both green
So imagine my shock in Marketplace Bar
Where existential shit smirked from the walls
Taunting the Drum and Bass
Threatening sound barriers
WOOD stencilled onto wood in jest or silent reproach
Philosophy not love, residing in weird places.
**
Three stages of a night, in the womb of Londinium
Randomness and beauty, a tale of one city

Modernity and Emasculation

A new disease has crept insiduously upon humanity. I’m being generous by saying humanity. What I really mean is men; a disease has crept insiduously upon the men of today’s world. What do I mean? Well it’s quite simple really.

I was thinking about the movie, A Knight’s Tale (starring Shannyn Sossamon, Rufus Sewell, Heath Ledger) and how much wisdom there is embedded in it. If you haven’t watched it, please run out and buy/rent it. You’ll see this post in a new light. Basically, there was a jousting tournament and the winner would get to have the princess Jocelyn’s hand in marriage. In those days, when they said ‘may the best man win’, it was perfectly logical that the woman would choose to be with the best man. And the men rose to the challenge. If a man found a woman out of his league because he lost a challenge or wasn’t able to support her, he went away to make himself better, fully understanding that the woman would do the best she could for herself by choosing the best man in every situation. He’d ride gallantly away and wish her luck. He’d be a good sportsman and acknowledge his loss gracefully.

Now, men have been emasculated and are afraid of competition. If a woman picks the best man for herself, the left out guy will huff off in a sulk and rather than find ways to improve him self, accuse her of being ‘materialistic’ and a ‘gold digger’. He’ll sit there feeling sorry for himself, slagging women off about how they’re all the same. I’ve seen this happen a million times, and I think, stop moping and feeling sorry for yourself. Either you upgrade yourself to the level where you can attain the type of women you want, or you settle for a woman who is in your leaugue, but you can’t expect a woman to lower her standards because you’re not up to hers. According to Jeanette Winterson, ‘Sometimes you win. Sometimes you lose.’ If you happen to be male, take it from me, your dignity is better preserved when you can own up to certain inadquacies and work on them. Wallowing in self pity is just really sad, and we will leave you for the better man. Hahaha.

Jane Austen remained single all her life because the man she loved couldn’t afford to maintain the standard of living to which she was accustomed. The husband-to-be-that-never-was did not resent her, because he acknowledged that there was no point in reducing her to squalor just for the sake of his own ego. So they conducted their relationship happily, pragmatically, and he never accused her of being materialistic or a gold digger. She was neither. She was a smart woman, and he was a smart man.

Oh for the days when men fully expected to have to compete for the things they wanted. Now they want women to make things easy for them and dive headlong into compromised situations to prove they aren’t ‘materialistic’. I admit, some women take things a bit too far, but for the most part, men have simply lost their balls. Some of them would rather buy a bride on ebay than spear a wild boar for the love of their life.

Spear me a boar, I say.

Love at First Sight, A Few Years Later

It takes someone who knows what they’re doing to incorporate aspects of travel writing and flanneurism with chic lit so seamlessly. This is my ooh, let’s see, third Lisa Jewell, and I’m impressed with her portrayal of London yet again. Not only does it reflect a keen sense of observation, an engagement with setting, it incorporates theoretic concepts that deal with city living.

What G. E. Debord described tediously as the Theory of the Dérive, and the natural influx and out flux release points of a city (or psycho geographical points) Lisa Jewell captures perfectly in this book, when her characters find themselves drawn inexplicably to Covent Garden Market or to The British Library or coasting along Piccadilly Circus. Her sense of place is very much real; each location in the novel symbolic in itself and it’s real life reputation, of a plot movement.

I especially like punchy dialogue between the characters, and the synergy between all the individual character’s plot lines and the larger context of the story. The result was right up Laughter Street; the book is hilarious! Considering that I picked this up in search of some good reading that wasn’t connected in any way to course work, I found it was the best thing I could have picked up…my sides are still aching!

While I was reading, it took a while for me to accept what she was doing with the story, even though I understood. She was telling a love story, but from the perspective of real life where people make mistakes, where signs kick people in the butt and they still flounder/make the wrong choices, where people regress many times before they progress, where love doesn’t make everything syrupy and perfect until it’s (almost) too late. Despite the candyfloss coloured love at first sight story line, the book is loaded with a quiet, soulful resonance – those characters were real people!

Nevertheless, after nearly 18 years of mixed messages, doomed marriages, dysfunctional families, and passed up opportunities, Vince Mellon and Joy Downer finally rediscover the love that began between them that summer in Huntstanton…

Vince & Joy is published by Penguin Books £7.99.

Like Discarding Knickers

Images from www.thestorkwearhouse.com

Almost everyone I know now has some sort of parallel life they’re living. Between Facebook, MySpace, Hi5 and MSN, people have the opportunity to choose what name they want to be called, how they want it spelt, and for how long they want that name to refer to them. When their screen name no longer suits them, it is discarded, yes, like disposable knickers. It makes me wonder (and please forgive me for the terrible cliché) what’s in a name? If changing our real life first and surnames didn’t involve the hassle of public announcements, appearances in court and tracking down every bank, telephone and gas company we did business with, would we change those too? If we use online communities to share what we think are the most interesting parts of our lives (apart from for confidentiality reasons) why do we chop and change our names? Do they detract from our fun-loving, happy-go-lucky online image? And what informs the pseudonyms we give ourselves? Are they suited to the mood we were in when we logged on, or to the nature of the new nugget of information we upload to share with the world? Or do they embody the sentiments we’d rather our parents had considered when they called us so and so? If names are as personal as they are said to be, then how are we able to disregard them even temporarily?

Or is that just the point? Do we dump our names temporarily sometimes to experiment with the freedom of being nameless, characters who can absorb and exhibit and experiment with different personas/characteristics? And if that's the case, aren't we then saying that our given names stifle and constrict us?

Apologies

Image from Google Images


I'm so sorry for being behind on my posts. Final deadlines had me averaging about 3 hours sleep per night, and no time for anything except work, work, work. As it is, I am catching up on sleep and trying to regenerate my addled brain cells which feel like they've been pickled in all the very bad coffee I've been subsisting on for the last three weeks. So...I'll be back shortly I promise. See you then.

xx

Exploring Erotica

Image from: http://www.citypaper.com/sb/91778/books_erotica.jpg

I was recently introduced to Black erotic fiction by a friend of mine at university and it started off a chain reaction of thought processes. I was curious. As a writer, I feel I have a responsibility to know what’s out there, so I read a chapter. She was reading The Sex Chronicles, and was so impressed by it that she ordered four more titles off Amazon when we went into the library to study. While this is in no way a criticism of people who enjoy this sort of literature, or indeed, of the genre’s authors, I think we have to think very carefully about the significance of such books.In the library, she showed me the corresponding website, Erotica Noir, where a prominent author of Black erotic fiction interacts with her readers, answering their sexual queries and also creates a forum where they can share their own real life erotic experiences. Although, admittedly, there was only one sexual image, the descriptions were vivid, each detail of every sexual act minutely described. And for all the protestations by the author on the sexual repression that women have suffered over the years needing to be challenged, I couldn’t help but think that this erotic fiction, while it may be liberating Black women sexually, also corroborates the historical (and media) image of the Black woman as a solely sexual being, a wench, a whore.

There is a fine line between sexual liberation and impropriety. Personally, there is nothing wrong with sex, except when it is turned into an exhibitionist movement. As I read the chapter of my friend’s book, it struck me that this was the textual cousin of traditional pornography. She was quick to assure me however, that this wasn’t porn at all. It was merely an expression of alternative creativity, linking her argument back to the concept of erotica as art. But how far can this go? Would that mean then, that such stories, or other images of the said erotica, if they were to involve children, would be absolved of all accusations of paedophilia? Also, how does the production and consumption of these stories stand up against what we would call our moral fabric? Are they a good behavioural manual for young Black women? What attitudes and mindsets do they sublimally assimilate from repeatedly reading these books? What ideas do they form about themselves, their sisters, their mothers and aunties within the greater context of society? Are these books not creating a multi-faceted dichotomy - a mass confusion between sexual liberation and endorsed baseness.

Black women everywhere are constantly fighting for respect, and are attempting to distance themsleves from the sex crazed image I mentioned before, which we see perpetrated mostly in music videos, but also deeply embedded in media semiotics. But how far are we actually getting?Are we not shooting ourselves in the foot by voicing our video-vixen dissent, and insisting on our respectability, only to write, publish and endorse this type of fiction? What image are we giving ourselves, especially as these books are plentiful in the Black Interest sections of book stores. If the adage about figuring someone out by the books they read were to be applied, then what should people deduce from looking at our shelves? What statement is our literary sub-culture making about us? Why should rampant sex be key to our literary manifesto?

This is not to say that all Black fiction is erotic, nor that all erotic fiction is Black. Neither is it to say that sex, or thinking through sexuality is wrong, but I find it hard to accept that erotica is any less objectionable than pornography. We really need to think about this, and make sure that our professions of decency are congruent across all areas of our lives.

It is entirely possible to say that I'm placing too great an importance on the image of Black women from the perspective of our reading material, and that after all, it's just sex; everyone does it as some point or other. What I'd like to know is this: what exactly do we mean by sexual liberation, and are we not, in all our methods of achieving this, overstating the point? What would sexual liberation look like? Even this erotic fiction which claims to libearate Black women plays charmingly into the very image we're trying to fight i. e. Black people don't read, but when they do, all they read is sex. Isn't true sexual liberation being a sexual being, among, not over and above, other things? Would true liberation not discredit the current definition of Black women as one of the synonyms of the word sex? I am not advocating censorship, I'm not accusing the Black eroticists of ruining society. I'm just saying we need to think, really think about what it means.

Comments and insights very welcome.

Potato Cider Anyone?

Potatoes from: http://www.umassvegetable.org/images/soils_crops_pest_mgt/crop/potato1.jpg

Bottles of wine from: http://blog.lightninglabels.com/blog/images/wine_5.jpg

A bottle of potato wine, made by an astral travelling old eccentric talks, quite legitimately, to Jay Mackintosh, who drinks too much, writes too little, and hallucinates a lot. Personally, I might have been inclined to diagnose malaria, except he hadn’t been to the tropics. But there isn’t just one bottle of wine talking. There are six, and unlike The Big Six (the men who fought to secure Ghana’s independence from British rule in 1957) the six bottles are called The Specials. Except the most special of all, the Fleurie ‘76 was actually made from potatoes. Fancy that!

I’ve never seen talking wine fictionalized in all my life, and it’s impressive. It’s really crass isn’t it, when an alkie says ‘I drank because the drink told me to’, but here, it works. The Specials rattle and talk to Jay from the cellar, they solve his problems, they tatse of magic and far away lands, and of the cosy kitchen of his youth; they contain layman’s alchemy.

It’s a really good book set between metropolitan London and rural Lansquenet. Apart from Jay’s status as a one hit wonder author and the power tussles with his media barbie girlfriend, it’s a touching story of the unravelling of a man’s past, and the congruence between his past and his future. Jay’s relationship with Jackapple Joe, and the love of gardening and wine making that he got from the old man, are an intersting way of showing us what the main character would become, and most importantly, why. I think it’s one of thos major considerations that many authors take for granted these days; why a character is the way they are, and Harris did a brilliant job with this.

The characterizatione? Spot on. Setting? Ditto. Narrative style and dialogue? Perfect. Needless to say, I truly wish I had written this!

P. S. There were blackberries in the supermarkets not too long ago. Perhaps I’ll try to make some actual blackberry wine, with fruit, not spuds. I’m sure there’s bound to be a recipe I can get hold of. That said, perhaps the bosses at Spuds’u’like should take a cue from this and explore a new business area – collecting the unsold potatoes at all their outlets, and brewing them into a special in-house ale. Layman’s alchemy, afterall!

Blackberry Wine (£6.99) is published by HarperCollins

The Prodigy Problem

Physicists from: http://www.cartoonstock.com/lowres/sea0215l.jpg

Nerds from: http://pisarek.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2006/12/nerds.gif




Aaaaaaargh. I hate child prodigies You know why? Because they make me look bad! Here I am at 21 struggling through the characterization in my first I-hope-someone-will-publish-this- novel, and there are 14 year olds composing music and conducting the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Violinists who played Royal Albert Hall at 13. Actors and actresses who made millions before they were 5. All those gormless liitle people who at 7 are the Supermodels my friends and I will bever be. Disgusting. Absolutely sad.

I bet they have no friends and are like, socially awkward. I bet they have no conversational skills. I bet they’re all short-sighted in their left eye and long-sighted in their right eye. I bet they masturbate and can’t hold a plate of food level. I bet they have no idea how to relax and have a good time…normally. I bet you they’re suicidal, and have ugly toe nails. I bet their sense of humour is skewed. I bet they talk to their goldfish and eat paper. I bet they make bad house guests. I bet they can’t spell. Fancy that huh, they can’t spell? I bet they wouldn’t know how to use a can opener, or sew on a button, or drive a manual car. I bet they eat their bogey before they go to sleep. I bet they snack on old carpet and smell funny! I bet they wet the bed.

I think I'll go to bed now. So what if I’m sulking? I’ve been stuck in the library doing my dissertation for the last three weeks, and found out with a shock this morning that I had no clean jeans. So I had to stuff myself into an old pair of cargo pants, which have now grown considerably smaller in the wash…ahem! So anyway, I walked around today with a smile plastered to my face and my crotch aching like an injury. It really wasn’t funny. Tight trousers are bad. Do not wear them.

Which brings me to my next point. Having experienced for the first time what it feels like to wear trousers too small, and I’m a girl, can we not suppose, by deduction, that men who wear them are lacking something? I think we can.



If anyone has any ideas on how best to keep these awfully talented children from stealing my shine, please drop me a line.



OK so I'm tired. Good night!

On Being Still

This picture was electronically drawn by Erika Aoyama on April 5, 2003

Rhythmic beating of Conga,
Eyes toward the sun
The trek to peace continues
Till the earth be done.

We know the fingers of fear
Like the touch of a lover
Like the duvet on which we’ve learnt to rest
Roll over, roll over.

And in the silent waiting
We conspire with the dawn
Senses upturned and open
To hear the voice from beyond.

Rhythmic beating of Conga,
A wailing among the reeds
Gulping relief like water
Peace bathes us like the seas.



© May 2007

Origins and Where We're From

iRepNigeria image from http://djchronic.podomatic.com
Crossroads image from www.tauw.org





Ok so I've been feeling very patriotic lately. Maybe that's a part of growing up. Your body matures, your emotions develop, your mind expands and then gradually, without being fully cognizant of the process, you become AWARE. In my case now, I'm becoming very aware of the ways in which the richness of my culture informs who I am. I heard a famous figure today (I can't mention names) say that who he is has has nothing to do with where he comes from. His parents were born in Jamaica and he was born in the UK so he thinks they are Jamaican and he is British. Wow! I couldn't disagree more. Yes, he's British. But essentially, at the very core of him, on a fundamental level, I say he is Jamaican. Citizenship and nationality are two different things. It's simply not possible to come from a different place from your parents. You came from them, so you come from where they come from. Period.

Oh Louder, Baby!

Slavery poster from: www.valley-entertainment.com




Olaudah Equiano, or oh- louder as he was mockingly called before the forceful changing of his name to Gustav Vassa; what a celebrity he’s become! Ever since the release of feature film Amazing Grace in March 2007, his name has been bandied about over dinner, over drinks, over the airwaves – endlessly. As I missed the fanfare surrounding his premiere into mainstream consciousness, I had the honour of meeting him today, in a play, African Snow, performed by the Riding Lights Theatre Company. Quite different, I must say, from old familiar Kunta Kinte. Partly, I suppose, due to the fact that Equiano’s account is autobiographical, not quasi-fictional.

I went in there prepared to be disgusted by a Western over-rendered impression of African-ness; by convoluted facts and dramatised excuses. After all, just last month, a sweet looking old lady told my sister and I at the V&A’s Uncomfortable Truths exhibition that slavery wasn’t necessarily bad because ‘the poor slave masters didn’t know any better, the poor souls.’ Probably the wrong thing to say to two proud Nigerian girls on a hot afternoon, but her blush showed us that she obviously didn’t mean it how it came out, so we smiled at her elderly brain fart and moved on.

Nevertheless, that sort of sentiment is what I expected, and I was pleasantly surprised when I found my pre-programmed disapproval challenged. African Snow was a charming discourse between John Newton, writer of the hymn Amazing Grace, and Olaudah Equiano, freed slave turned Parliamentary circuit speaker.

What appealed to me most, was the robustness of the dialogue. The imagery was hauntingly poignant yet not conspicuous. Equiano, gifted with words, sustained moving monologues in a verbal travelogue that led us on the commute between his actual freedom (before he was stolen from the coast of West Africa) and the shifted goal post or redefined freedom (the day he bought his own freedom for 40 guineas). Newton’s rendition of his journey to spiritual enlightenment that caused him to join the Abolitionist cause was made more accessible by the portrayal of his thoughts through his hymns. The combination of these two commentaries, both poetic, both emotional, both raw, worked together elegantly, like an antagonistic pair of muscles. And how’s this for a tasty dramatic subversion – old Wilberforce was played by a black man!

The stage set must be mentioned and praised very highly! A slatted wooden contraption sat at a forty-five degree angle on the stage, in some scenes a ship, and in others representative of the shadow of depravity that many souls wriggled under. Admittedly, African Snow’s concern with the condition of the human soul is one that everyone can appreciate, whatever side of the slavery argument one comes down on.

It’s a good piece of theatre. I would recommend seeing it, if only just to have a new addition to your modern collection of opinions which by now, if you’re truly up to date, should include organic clothing, climate change, and the cancelled Royal engagement at the very least.

African Snow tours nationally until June 30th, 2007.


© April 2007

Ying and Yang Subverted

OK. So a friend of mine sent me this the other day. It's called The Awful Truth. Funny eh? I found it hilarious. While I am (not) of the opinion that all men are bullied by their crotches, I do agree that this photo gives a more or less accurate portrayal of the discrepancies between the male and female dispositions. The subverted ying and yang thing got me thinking as well...is there any significance to the fact that the woman is portrayed in white, the conventional colour of purity/innocence; and the man is portrayed as the wicked voldermort in black. Are women really so innocent and are men really so evil? You can bring this topic up next time you go down the pub with your mates and watch as the opinion line divides the group in two, hahaha.

Nevertheless, I thought I'd file it in my MC's Crimewatch - Girls against Goons section. Like I said (maybe) not all men are one track minded, but keep this image in your head to guard you pschologically, sublimally, subconsciously against the ones that are.

And guys...you can take a joke right? x

© April 2007

Scrying off the Emails

Image: I Told You So from http://www.jigboxx.com.

Ha! My most recent rant couldn’t have been better timed (That’s True for All Times/19th April 2007). What’s that you say? How flattering. No. No, I’m not a prophet. Just take a look at this forward I got. Not only is crime rife in the the capital, but the criminals are more brazen than ever – they rob people in broad daylight. The night crusaders of old have evolved into a highly sophisticated operation that no longer needs to hide under cover of darkness! And in Central London, no less. Phah! Run for the hills, I say. Adopt a countenance of paranoia and run for the hills.

No don’t; don’t be silly. Just be careful. And invest in a nice big pair of scandal shades – and possibly a portable music player. Never mind that you’ll look like the architypal 21st century consumer – apparently, these accoutruments make it harder for goons to distract your attention. Although, wait a minute…if you do insist on plugging up your consciousness with some noise or other, so that you can’t even hear your phone ring, how do you expect to notice when the goons are dancing at your elbow? Eh?

At the risk of sounding totally mean (which I’m not, by the way) I think that Londoners should use a bit more common sense. Yeah, yeah, so you’re a career girl at large in the capital, but for goodness sake! Don’t stand around juggling a sandwich, yakking on your daytime contract to your friend in Notts with your bag gaping and all your other shiny consumer electronics glinting in the sunshine! If you do this, you will get robbed!! Be observant, and consider the fact that a guy checking you out might be doing so to see what he can nick off you. So stop flicking your hair and elongating the ‘this is me drawing lots of cash from the ATM’ pose. You get the cash, you stash the cash, then you leave.

Ok. Now read the email. x



From: Withheld for obvious reasons

Sent: 17 April 2007 at 14:31

To: Everyone

Subject: FW: Warning: women being targeted at central London cash points

Just as a quick warning to you - I just got assaulted at an HSBC cashpoint in Hanover Sq at lunchtime (broad daylight, with a queue behind me) and £200 was taken from my account. Turns out there's a gang of very smart Romanians (in my case it was 2 guys and a girl) who are posing as free-newspaper-giver-outers - they waited until i'd keyed in my pin and hit the 'Get Cash' option before coming up from both sides, jostling me and thrusting their newspapers at me and trying to persuade me to take one. Behind the papers, the guy on my left hit the £200 button and the girl on the right grabbed the cash - they were so fast that no one in the queue even saw them take it, and just assumed they were harrassing me to take a paper (my card got returned to me out of the machine). It was only when I went into the bank to tell them there were people harrassing cashpoint users and to double check they hadn't taken any cash that we realised. Went to the police and it turns out they've been targeting women around Mayfair and Goodge St and elsewhere around Oxford Circus with a huge number of incidents in the past couple of weeks - all in broad daylight and in very open places, and always taking £200. The advice is to use cash machines inside banks or get cashback if you're in these areas."

© April 2007

Words

This is the back garden at home. I used this image because it's one of my favourite places to write. Sitting under the tree, it's so peaceful and laid back. The only thing you have to watch out for is random splogdes of bird poo that occassionally come flying down, hahaha!

Why do words fascinate me so?
Both to listen and to speak.
Aren’t they so pretty?
Ledges on which to ponder
While gazing at the sky.

Or perhaps they are the sky,
Under which we wonder.
Up to which we aspire
Beneath where we burgeon and grow.

© April 2006

That's True for All Times

'Dancing on Lies' from www.nicholsoncartoons.com
'Crime Does Not Pay' from www.samueldesign.com/comics
'Sherlock Holmes' from www.nachshon.org

It’s rather uncanny how people like George Simmel, writing in the late 1800’s, managed to capture city living so minutely. In 2007, we tend to think of those times as the dark ages, but everything he’s written about people living in the Metropolis, is painfully true – the paranoia, the mannerisms, the psyche, the fear. How did he know all that? Could we have changed so little?

Veblen spoke about showy nouveaux riches in America just after the Industrial Revolution, using their women as mannequins to display their wealth. Has anything changed? Isn’t it the same now? People get a bit of cash and all of a sudden, the only thing they deign to eat is organic fair-trade gluten free sashimi.

And the powers that be still lie. For those of you who didn't know, Sherlock Holmes was very partial to a shot of heroine now and then, when there were no crimes to solve. Or so he told Watson. When, in the history of London, has there been a time when there were no crimes to solve, eh? I suppose his shooting drugs wasn't necessarily criminal, not like it was for the crooks he brought to justice - old Sherlock was just a little bored, that's all! Give the geezer a break, will you?

Apparently, crime in London has dropped consistently over the last four years, and we are now the safest city in Western Europe. Yeah right! Do we all look that stupid? Someone tell me this isn’t reminiscent of Orwell’s 1984? How can they tell us crime’s gone down, when we all know it’s gone up, probably higher than ever. I bet they'll have the Thought Police after us next - Oi you, you disbelieved when we told you crime had gone down, you'll be tried for treason! I forget who, but someone suggested recently that the powers that be, be made to take lie detector tests publicly. Whoever you are that suggested this, I think you’re a modern day genius.


© April 2007

Preoccupations

Has anyone else noticed that authors are incredibly themed creatures? Once I read something from an author and like it, I have to unearth their whole back catalogue, and by doing this I’ve noticed that many of them harp on and on about a given subject place or topic. It’s not a terrible thing I suppose; in fact I don’t think it can be avoided, because if they can come up with an average of 1000 combined pages of material relating to one thing, then it has to be a pretty integral part of who they are, right? Actually, maybe it’s a good thing, because when we pick up a book by our favourite author, it’s because we enjoy what they obsess about, and we know, to some extent, what to expect. Allow me to share their obsessions, but we can call it inspiration if you’d prefer. Of course, this is by no means a comprehensive list…

Author Preoccupation Titles

1. Joanne Harris

Food & Drink, Rural France, Magic

Blackberry Wine
Chocolat

The Lollipop Shoes
Five Quarters of the Orange

2. Tony Parsons

Infidelity and Families

The Family Way
One For My Baby
Man and Wife
Man and Boy

3. Lily Brett

The Holocaust, Sex, Germs, Poos

New York

Too Many Men
Just Like That

4. Lisa Jewell

Yuppies with messed up love lives

Vince and Joy

A Friend of the Family
Ralph’s Party

I think it's really funny how the lofty art of novel writing is merely a reflection of our mundane collection of fixations. So much for my delusions of grandeur; I wonder what will appear on this list in a few years, when I’ve written a few books. I shudder to think what people will be able to list as my obsessions…hahaha!

Minjiba Cookey © 2007

What Friendship Should Be

The nectar of humanity
Peeling back like a flower
Moments of absurdity
Residing in friendship’s power

Some blood is undiluted by water
Some water never sullied by blood
The complexity of disagreement
Demystifying the illusion of enlightenment

Cider ruminating on the past
And beer foretelling the future
Really the conversation should last
Until dreams are combined by suture

The accommodation of different music
Appreciation of another taste
Walking the mile a deux
When there’s only so far your legs can go

And why should Friendship get less than love
When from her shoulders, he launches his acrobatics
She's a firmer bottom line to have
The rest is purely semantics.

Minjiba Cookey © 2007

Garrulously Bleeding, Quite Verbosely

It’s time for the world to wake up and realise that it’s adults, not kids who say the dumbest things. Sure, kids ask silly questions sometimes, and even go on to give themselves silly answers, but can you blame them? Their perception and understanding of the world isn’t fully developed, all their life’s experiences have usually been limited to what mummy and daddy think of as suitable, and appropriate, stuff that they can usually look back on with a smile, and think, 'that was fun'. As adults, the edges of our cosy candy floss consciousness have receded slowly, over time, through a cocktail of negative and positive experiences. We have supposedly become older and wiser. We claim to have learnt all these lessons and acquired a smartness that can only come with age. Why then do we talk such rubbish?

I do it too, just for the record. Even I am not above Grown Up Garrulous Disease (GUGD). The other day I caught myself saying to a friend, ‘Oh, I wish my loo roll was printed by the mint, then it would qualify as money, and I could get lots and lots of money for like 99p!’ Prime example. What was I going on about? The London Underground is good place to sample the various strains of nonsense that our minds come up with, although the atmosphere is considerably more sombre than it used to be before the bombings.

Mindless Talk on the Tube (MTT) went into a bit of a recession, but be ye not fooled, it’s coming back. While staring straight ahead, and pretending not to be at all interested, I have eavesdropped on all sorts of conversations, including those where party one says to party two, ‘Stop standing there looking as though your mammaries are about to fall off!’ Of course, party two had no idea what her friend was talking about. I had no idea, before this time, that there was a way in which a person could stand to alert other people to the fact that her boobs would soon detach themselves from her body. I tried to think of it on another level. Was that some sort of metaphor, or figurative, symbolic language? Maybe if I thought of how party two would feel if her chests did fall off, I’d understand why the clever party one was alluding to such a scenario to describe her friends demeanour at that time. I thought very hard about this for two days, and then filed it away in my brain under the category Yet Another Stupid Statement (YASS). Even though party one may have looked uncomfortable, or scared, or hot and bothered, there were other ways that this sentiment could have been conveyed without managing to sound quite so brainless. Party one was clearly a GUGD sufferer whose claustrophobia on the train was causing her to exhibit MTT traits and which ultimately resulted in classic YASS behaviour.

Many studies have revealed that written messages have the potential to be clearer than spoken messages, because writing encourages the organisation of thought. Writing lends itself to being edited so that by the time our audience reads the message, we have had the chance to ensure that our intentions and meanings have been made clear. Not so with speech. When you put your foot in it, the best you can do is blush, clamp your hand over your mouth, apologize and say ‘that didn’t come out right.’ But the damage will already have been done. If this is true, and many people agree it is, then why do we still manage to make so many gaffs on notices and signs?

I came across a bill board in Accra with a colourful ad for Smoked Prawn flavoured noodles. ‘Is it the smoke or is it the prawn?’, the sign wanted to know. I was most irritated. ‘Both, obviously,’ I muttered under my breath. Of all the things that could have been written on the board, of all the creative ideas in the world, of all the clever sublimal messages that could have been employed, of all the possible sales pitches, why such an inane one? I kept wondering how that sign could have passed the Credibility Test. It didn’t pass mine! It must have taken a lot of planning and decision making and market research to get that ad unto such a strategically located board. I thought it was a bit of a disappointment that its message was just another typically daft phrase made by a professional adult. Tut tut.

Driving through Eastbourne two weekends ago, a sign outside a building told me it had been ‘successfully let’. Fair enough, I thought, but either it’s been let or it hasn’t. The success is inherent in the fact that it has been let. My aunt agreed with me, and we had a little twitter about how people say silly things, which is how I got the idea for this piece. I can’t exactly pin point why we say these silly things. Granted, the age of reason is long gone, and we are currently living in an Anything Goes world, but does that give us license to stop making an effort to make sense?

While I’m lambasting adults for saying dumb things, I can’t go on without mentioning the curse of political correctness. It sounds silly when we say that someone is vertically challenged instead if short, or accident prone, instead of clumsy. I read in the Times on Sunday about a woman who was told off by police when she described her assailant as a bald, fat man. I couldn’t imagine for the life of me, what they’d rather she said. Horizontally proficient? Hair Impaired? Weight loss averse? Follicularly Challenged? See what I mean?


Minjiba Cookey © 2006

Solitude Doesn't Mean Lonely

Received wisdom says that there are three women for every man on the planet, so from the outset, you’re battling the odds. Word on the street has it that all the good men are taken. The men left over just don’t do it for you. All their various shortcomings confirm exactly why they’re still single, and hey, you weren’t born to lap up the dregs. You can’t have the good one you really wouldn’t have minded, because he’s taken - he married your college friend last year. You can’t have the very available one at church for one of three reasons. A) he has crusty feet. The sight of them last summer took the joy out of your iced latte. B) he doesn’t seem to be going anywhere, and you have dreams. C) he’s a lovely guy. So lovely in fact, that at any given time there are two women who comprise the category of his ‘one and only’. It doesn’t help that the mother of his nine month old child is now back in the stakes.

The next landmark age (one of the really annoying ones that ends in zero, like 30, or 40. Don’t you wish you could go back to 20?) is standing at the end of the road, grinning smugly as you plod your way reluctantly to him. Every time your birthday comes round, he snatches the opportunity to use what should actually be a happy day, as a day of mourning, for the days when you still had ‘all the time in the world’. You probably wished to be here when you were ten, so you wouldn’t have to go to bed at bedtime, but now the day is upon you; you’ve completed half the journey to being a geriatric and the fairy tale you’ve carried with you since girlhood still hasn’t happened.

Here’s a deep question for single women. Are you happy?
In the light of the numerous talk shows, tapes, and books on the keys to successful marriages and relationships, single women are having to find a niche for themselves. But is it that simple? How do you fight the ‘poor me blues’ when you arrive home with aching feet, to leaking taps and rubbish that’s begging to be taken out?

Instead of hating your house for being so empty, shut the door and close your eyes, and enjoy the feeling of having a sanctuary, a sane space that’s all yours, where you can think and cry and grow and be, without having to explain your mood swings to anyone.

Sing loudly, and badly in the shower, confident in the fact that only teddy can hear you, and he wont ever break up with you.
Be thankful that your time is yours. Instead of spending half an hour making the perfect family fry up each morning, you get to use that time to pray. Grab a bagel and a coffee, and meditate on how great God is. Consider this: at 8pm, when your blissfully wedded friend (no hard feelings to married folk, mind!) is moaning to you on the phone about doing laundry on a Friday night, be grateful that you’ve had enough time not only to shave your legs, but to give yourself a mini facial. Imagine trying to clean up after a chronic fling-his-socks-across-the-room-man while you’re pms-ing.

Before you drive yourself into depression over the lack of a cute baby to dress up in Baby Gap and play with, remember it ain’t cute when your earth-mother organic food comes out at the other end with a bad smell and a yell in the middle of the night. If you’re really feeling broody, head down to the local park on your day off. There’ll be lots of tired mum’s only too happy to use your help.

And finally invest in you. Open a regular savings account to squirrel away the extras you don’t crucially need. Treat your friends and family. Shop guiltlessly (but sensibly) while you can still do so without psychologically equating every expenditure to its value in nappies or mother-in-law-birthday lunches.
As the recent Vodaphone ad campaign says, there’s no time like now. It’s easy to disregard what we have in the present because we’re constantly looking to the future ‘in faith’. Any wonder about where those constant feelings of dissatisfaction come from? If today is never good enough, then tomorrow can never be better, and we’ll never appreciate the progress we’ve made since yesterday. Just as companionship is a gift, solitude is a special, and it doesn’t have to mean lonely.

So cheer up, single ladies, we’re in this together. No more moping, and pulling long faces. No more longing glances at the bridal section of the news stand. No more false glossy smiles when wedding announcements are made from the pulpit. Quit cutting your eyes at the blushing couple in Pravins who’ve spent an hour discussing the pros and cons of each style of ring.
Give yourself a hug when you wake up each morning, and work that freedom like a new pair of shoes!


Minjiba Cookey © 2006

Wielding Dreams

Salvadore Dali: Woman at the Window

When I look,
it is not backwards or forwards
for those judgements, now
are beyond my reach;
not mine to make, to say, to know.

Over my shoulder, yet
precursor to the progress of my thought,
a rambling through delirium
Of questions, and probing
to the achievement of nought

Perhaps I lie.

Through looking back, I see
where I would really rather be.
Too wrenching to visit those climes
whose intensity recomended them
to a forthcoming day – minus woe -
that hasn’t yet come.
Not yet, no.

Sadly,

in sculpting the future,
snippets of Before insist
quite staunchly on inclusion:
‘Ode to me, be governed by this.’
The bastard past
of scalding, in a warm cradle of fleece
that I must insist
should persist no more.

But do I desist?

Ready as ever, rat pee on a factory tin
I draw out my familiar canvas
of where your smile begins;
burned through your hollow cheeks
and your calves spring you up,
so ready to rise,
to jog your way free.

Oh the places you said
you would take me to see!
You are still my back drop
when now I want you not to be.

But my engine is creaky now.
There is a sad finality to my weep.
A bit of damp on the old cheeks.
And a cry so savage, the timbre is deep.

So.

That would mean a bye-bye
to you forever.
About-face on all our dreams
being lived out now by others.
Not ours to wield anymore, it would seem.
The time for youth has gone
and the sea of hard choice comes.

Two oars rowed to an island
and there were laid apart -
where one inquired of the sky
and gleaned nothing,
where the other atoned for the past
and gained nothing.
Where both, they breathed for a tomorrow,
and breathed some more
and are still,
in separate unison
Breathing…
Panting…
Choking…
Is this death?

Not in a nutshell, no.

But suppose,
Just suppose.
One dream uttered in two voices,
ventured by two agreeing minds,
is the sling from the past
which will haul us at present
into the dewy future?
Suppose it was strong enough
to make its defectors renegades?

What would we do then?